by John Shinal, Special for USA TODAY

by John Shinal, Special for USA TODAY

As Facebook gets ready to release second-quarter results on Wednesday, last week's jump in Yahoo shares the day after its financial report has focused investor attention on the next big Internet IPO.

In all likelihood, that initial public offering will come not from the U.S. but from Hong Kong, where Alibaba Group Holding, which operates a network of online commerce sites, may list its shares as early as this fall.

At least that's what some investors are betting on, as they bid up Yahoo shares as much as 10% on July 17 after CFO Ken Goldman said the company is already looking at various tax strategies as a way to keep more of any proceeds from the potential sale of its remaining Alibaba stake.

Yahoo owns just under 24% of the company, and is obligated to sell at least half of that based on a deal struck with Alibaba founder Jack Ma last year.

Yahoo also reported a higher profit vs. a year ago - helped in good measure by a partial sale of its Alibaba stake - and an uptick in page views, which had been declining for more than a year.

But at least one Internet analyst pegged the majority of the Yahoo stock pop to the hunger among U.S. tech investors for any piece of fast-growing Alibaba.

"People are running with those (Goldman) comments," says Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst for Wedge Partners, which provides institutional investors with independent stock research.

And Yahoo tantalized investors by showing a slide during its earnings presentation - which came in the form of a video conference call - that detailed an explosive acceleration in Alibaba's business.

The company, which owns some sites that sell goods directly and others that merely help online sellers and buyers find each other, has been described as a cross between eBay and Amazon.com.

According to Yahoo, Alibaba's profit for the quarter ended in March more than tripled, to $669 million from $220 million in the year-earlier period, while revenue rose 71%, to $1.38 billion.

Those numbers would equate to a quarterly net profit margin of 48%, roughly double that of Google, which last week reported an operating margin of 23.8% and a net margin of 24.6% for its second quarter.

What's more, Alibaba's profit margin jumped 13 percentage points, from 35% of revenue during the fourth quarter of 2012, an acceleration that has investors wanting to own Yahoo, just so they can benefit in a potential Alibaba initial offering.

"The big money sees Yahoo's Alibaba stake as a high-value asset," says Pyykkonen, who has met with large institutional investors in New York, Chicago and San Francisco in recent months.

"They're more excited about that than they are with Yahoo's operating business itself," he says.

In its most recent quarter, Yahoo earned operating income of $137 million, while also reporting income from its equity interests - mostly Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan - of $225 million.

In comparison, Google had operating income of $3.1 billion in its most recent quarter, while Facebook's operations earned $373 million in the first quarter. (Facebook reports second-quarter results late Wednesday.)

To get an idea of how important Yahoo's Alibaba stake now is to its stock price, consider that Yahoo last year booked a $4.6 billion gain from its Alibaba sale.

That figure dwarfed the $566 million in operating income Yahoo earned in all of 2012, and without it, Yahoo's $3.95 billion in 2012 net income would have been a loss instead.

With various analysts pegging Alibaba's potential IPO market value in a range as high as $70 billion to $80 billion, Yahoo's remaining stake could be worth as much as $18 billion.

That would provide the company a much-needed income boost as it battles Google and Facebook in the market for online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer also has pledged to return to investors at least some of the company's Alibaba proceeds.

In May, Alibaba named as its new CEO Jonathan Lu, who said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this month that he believed the company was ready for an IPO.

The IPO interest in Alibaba shows part of the challenge confronted by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as he looks to win back the favor of tech investors.

While Facebook's business, which depends on advertising, doesn't compete directly with Alibaba's e-commerce sites, the social network does have to compete with the China firm in the minds of global investors who manage pension and mutual funds.

Those big investors were burned badly by Facebook, whose shares are still more than 30% below their IPO price of $38.

If Alibaba can execute a successful initial offering this year - whether in Hong Kong or the U.S. - it will vacuum up some amount of the growth investment dollars that otherwise might have gravitated toward Facebook (or Google).

In the meantime, as a proxy, investors are glomming onto Yahoo.

Analysts expect Facebook to report year-over-year revenue growth of 36% for the second quarter, while its profit is seen rising at about half that rate.